The differences between them were slight. The bairdi weighed about a pound more. The opilio had smoother shells, slightly longer than they were wide, but otherwise to the untrained eye looked much the same as the bairdi. Kate decided it was like telling the difference between red and silver salmon; you had to get up close and personal to tell them apart. But not too close; she jerked back out of the reach of one snapping pincer just in time.

The season on opilio didn't open for another two months so they went back in the water. The bairdi were sorted for sex and size. A week's practice had made the six inchers easier to spot; the ones closer to the legal limit she checked with a curved piece of wood carved to fit over the crab's upper shell, measuring five and a half inches end to end. Males under five and a half inches and females were thrown back into the sea, the remainder into the hold, the trip into Dutch and a steam cooker all that remained of their immediate future.

Kate remembered reading somewhere that tanner crab could live up to fourteen years. It took six years for the female to mature and bear eggs. When she did, she could carry as many as 300,000 eggs. As tired as Kate was, she marveled every time she saw a bulging abdominal flap, and there was a certain reverence in the way she handled them. The males she tossed carelessly into the hold with the thousands of tanners already sloshing back and forth in the sea water that would keep them alive until they reached shore and the processor. Plenty more where they came from, or she wouldn't be standing up to her ass in them right now.

Bending once again to her task, she was somewhat shielded from the gusts of wind by the pot launcher and the railing, but the constant rocking back and forth made her head swim and her stomach churn. She knew better than to complain, though, and kept sorting.